Bovell beats pain for bronze

ATHENS: Trinidad and Tobago’s George Bovell has admitted that a moment of doubt crept into his medal bid on Thursday night before he went on to snatch a history-making bronze in the men’s 200 metres individual medley at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Bovell, 21, was lying sixth after the first 50 metres of butterfly and did not improve his position during the backstroke phase at the halfway stage that found him more than two seconds behind the leader and eventual champion Michael Phelps, of the USA. “I had some doubts going through my mind in the backstroke (but) I just kept thinking how badly I wanted it (the medal) on the breaststroke,” Bovell said. The double Pan Am Games champion executed a superb breaststroke phase and rushed decisively from sixth to second place with a stunning 33.95 split — one of the fastest breaststroke splits in the history of the event.

He produced a steady freestyle final phase and only lost the silver medal by 0.02 seconds, to the fast finishing American Ryan Lochte. “I was just pushing through the pain ... and bringing it home with everything I had on the freestyle,” Bovell said. “I could tell it was going to be close because I could see in my peripheral vision, Laszlo Cseh, from Hungary, was putting up a fight, and I was just thinking about getting perfect timing on my finish,” Bovell said. Bovell registered a personal best and new Commonwealth record one minute 58.80 seconds for his country’s first ever Olympic swimming medal, behind Michael Phelps, who won in a new Olympic record 1:57.14, ahead of his American teammate Lochte (1:58.78).

Cseh was only 0.04 seconds behind Bovell in fourth. It was the first medal for Bovell in a global event after three final appearances —  fourth at the 2001 World Championship, seventh at the 2002 World Short Course Championship, and fifth at the World Championship in Barcelona last year. He is the first CARICOM swimmer to win an Olympic medal, topping recent performances by Barbadian Leah Martindale, fifth in the 1996 women’s 50-metre freestyle, and Jamaican Janelle Atkinson, fourth in the 400 freestyle in Sydney four years ago. Suriname’s Anthony Nesty had won Olympic gold in 1988 and bronze in 1992 but his country had not yet been a part of the CARICOM family. (CMC)